


Give Me Hope in the Darkness

by PrettyPeary



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt Sara Lance, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Protective Ava, and then a little softness, legends to the rescue, protective legends, wait sara's mother is still a thing?, with more ANGST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 21:38:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17373746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyPeary/pseuds/PrettyPeary
Summary: She leaned her hands on the control console, trying to control the worry growing in her gut. “When was the last time you all saw Sara?”Zari shrugged, “This morning before she left for your place, why?”“Because she never showed up at my place. And she would never cancel on me unless it was a Legends emergency. Which it clearly isn’t right now.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “She hasn’t been answering her phone either.”OrSara's been kidnapped and Ava and the Legends have to work together to find their Captain





	Give Me Hope in the Darkness

Sara’s return to consciousness involves a pain radiating from the back of her skull and her being pretty pissed. Involves her prissiness devolving into shock when she lifts her head and realizes her arms are chained at an angle above her and her ankles have been chained to the floor. So whoever did this obviously knows she’s a dangerous person to piss off.

What the fuck happened to her. She couldn’t have been on a mission because she would have been in her White Canary outfit instead of black skinny jeans, a sports bra, and oh great she’s barefoot too. She tried to think back but everything was just foggy, how had someone gotten the jump on her? How had her team not been there? Before she could try to figure it out she heard a clanky lock being undone and a slither of chains before a door that must have been directly behind her slid open with a bang, and she heard two different sets of footsteps entering the room before she heard the door slam shut again. Only one of them came to stand in front of her, he had the nerve to look amused at her.

“Sara Lance, it is truly an honor to have you here.” He stood with his feet spread, arms crossed in front of him. He was dressed in, not tactical gear but he still seemed to screamed proper training.

Sara pulled hard against the chains holding her arms up and was rewarded with a sharp pain in both her wrists as the chains held firmly where they were. “Then maybe you’d consider unchaining the guest of honor.” Despite the pain in her wrists Sara smiled sweetly as she spoke.

The man looked her smugly, “But if we unchain you Little Bird the chances of you flying away before giving us what we want are too high to risk.”

Oh she definitely wasn’t a fan of being called Little Bird, “And just what is it that you want?” She dropped the smile and spoke through gritted teeth.

“It’s simple really, we want to know about your friends on the Waverider and your friends at the Time Bureau. See fixing all those little anachronisms has really hurt business and that’s just unacceptable.” He stepped closer to her, getting right up in her face and moved to clasp his hands behind his back. God his breath smelled like onions and piss.

Sara reared back and spit in his face, “Good luck with that plan dickhead.”

He calmly reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief before beginning to wipe the spit from his cheeks, “Don’t worry, we have plenty of time together for you to change your mind.” He put his handkerchief back in his pocket and turning away from her.

Sara saw what he was going to do, saw the slight change in his breathing his footing, saw his muscles tense just before he wound up and punched her across the face. A ring on his finger cutting open her cheek. It was going to be a long night.

\----

Ava was pissed. There was no other word for it because her girlfriend had stood her up on the movie night they’d been planning for weeks. She’d been looking forward to it for days and Sara had given no indication that she’d need to cancel. In fact, when they’d spoken last night she’d told Ava it didn’t matter what movie they put on because Sara was gonna make sure they didn’t watch any of it. So, now Ava was pissed she’d waited two hours and called Sara four times. She deserved an explanation and deserved one now. Changing quickly from her robe into leggings and one of Sara’s tees Ava opened a portal onto the bridge of the Waverider and stalked through it.

The bridge was empty so Ava headed toward Sara’s room figuring she would be there or the bridge. When the door opened for her she had already started talking before taking in the bed that clearly hadn’t been slept in or touched. “Gideon, where is the captain?”

“Captain Lance is not currently on board the ship Director.”

Ava felt a weight drop into her stomach, “Gideon call the rest of the Legends to the bridge, now.” She turned on her heel and went straight back to the bridge meeting the rest of the team there as they stumbled in, clearly most had been sleeping. Only Zari appeared to have already been awake based on the video game controller still in her hand.

Nate’s normally immaculate hair was all sitting against one side of his head as he rubbed his eyes, “Ava what the hell it’s the middle of the night.”

She leaned her hands on the control console, trying to control the worry growing in her gut. “When was the last time you all saw Sara?”

Zari shrugged, “This morning before she left for your place, why?”

“Because she never showed up at my place. And she would never cancel on me unless it was a Legends emergency. Which it clearly isn’t right now.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “She hasn’t been answering her phone either.”

Ray steps forward as makes to lay a hand on Ava’s arm before thinking better of it at the last second and setting it near hers on the console. “Gideon when was Captain Lance last on the ship?”

The AI’s voice rang out around them, “My records indicate Captain Lance left on the jump ship this morning after instructing me to lock the time drive while she was away.”

“What? Why would she do that?” Nate looked almost hurt.

“That’s not unusual, she always locks the time drive when she plans on spending the night at my place.” Ava remembered the first time her girlfriend had forgotten small detail until halfway through movie night. Calling Gideon frantically to lock it remotely before the Legends could get into trouble. “It’s not that she doesn’t trust you all with her life…she just doesn’t trust you with the ship.”

Nate made as though to argue when Mick chimed in gruffly from where he was leaning against the wall, “Let it go Pretty. I wouldn’t trust us either.”

 Zari cut the argument off, turning back to Ava, “So we need to figure out when and where Sara is. And who would want to hurt her.”

Ray nodded, “I would bet my Atom suit that she turned off the tracking beacon on the jump ship.”

Ava groaned when Gideon confirmed this. Some of Sara’s assassin habits, like doing everything possible to not be followed, were hard habits to break. “Ok, Nate and Ray start trying to figure out when and where Sara could have gone. Zari and Mick start trying to put a list together of enemies Sara or the Legends may have.”

Mick uncrossed his arms and came to the control panel, “And what are you gonna do?”

“I am going to scour the timeline for anything that’s changed since Sara got onto the jump ship.” The Legends nodded and started in on each assignment. Ava left the bridge and headed toward the galley, no one was going to be sleeping anytime soon and that meant they’d need the strongest coffee Gideon could fabricate.

\----

If she was being honest Sara wasn’t really sure how long she’d been in the room at this point. Her captors seemed to make it habit to not keep a consistent schedule of when the sessions would be. But she couldn’t feel her arms anymore because of the angle of the chains. Maybe that was a good thing, it meant she couldn’t feel the shackles biting into her wrist, couldn’t feel the blood slowly making its way down her arms.

She can feel herself getting weaker and it’s pissing her off, her captors give her a little water after every few sessions along with a little broth that has to be fed to her. So all in all her body is definitely not getting enough to keep going at the rate she needs it to.

The man who always asks the questions and doles the consequences of her refusals is starting to become more impatient. He’s giving her fewer chances to answer before resorting to increasing… aggressive methods. She might not be able to feel her arms, but every other cut and bruise stand out in sharp relief every time she takes a breath or turns her head.

Sara takes a deep breath anyway as the door opened behind her and her body instinctively tenses up. She trusts her team, she trusts Ava. They will come, she has faith in that.

\-----

It had been over 2 days of searching and everyone is coming up empty handed. Ava is dangerously close to losing it. Sara is strong and she has to believe it is all going to turn out ok, but tendrils of fear are starting to spread through her chest.

She walks onto the bridge to see the Legends spread out in an array as they keep going over and over the same information, hoping something will change. She goes straight to the console, leaning both hands on it and stretching her back slowly, listening as Sara’s team continues to talk in circles before interrupting them with a shake of her head. “Ok, we need to rethink this because what we are doing isn’t working. She is somewhere, we just need to figure out where, figure out when. Let’s start from scratch.” She starts pacing as she thinks. “What do we know?”

Zari sits up from where she was laying across a chair, “Well we know that Sara left hours earlier than she planned on and went somewhere other than your place. We went back and looked and every couple weeks she leaves earlier than usual.”

Ava keeps pacing, “Does she always turn the tracking beacon off?”

Nate shuffles through some jump ship logs, “Uhh, it looks like she did.” He keeps shuffling as he talks. “Wait, wait there was one time about six months ago that she didn’t. According to this she went to Central City in 2016 before going back to your place in the present.”

Ava stops pacing for a moment, _why the hell would Sara go to Central City two years ago_? She shakes her head and goes back to pacing, that why wasn’t as important right now as the who. As in who had taken her girlfriend. She paused in her pacing again, her hands spread on her hips taking a deep breath while she digested the new information, “Ok so we have a probable where and when. So, who in Central City has an issue with Sara? Or with the Legends? Who have you guys gone up against in this time or in that area?”

“Well,” Zari rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes before scrolling through something on her tablet, “It looks like there’s a couple different ones who hate us, a few that could hate Sara specifically, and one that actually hates the Time Bureau as a whole.” Ava watched her eyebrows go up as Zari kept going. “Well at least that’s less than the total we had five minutes ago.”

“Ok, so why do those couple hate you? What happened to cause that?”

Mick takes a swig of beer before contributing, “We pissed them off, they liked the anachronisms the way they were. Didn’t like when we fixed time.”

“Ok and I assume the ones that hate Sara are from her assassin days?” There were nods around the bridge from all the Legends. “Let’s rule them out.” Ava swallowed hard, “We would have found her body by now if it had been them. Which leaves us with the ones who hate you and the Time Bureau.”

She leans against the console and looked at the suspects Gideon has displayed in front of her. “Gideon is there any overlap between these groups or people that stands out?”

“Yes Director Sharpe, according to my analysis the most likely culprit from the given list of subjects is a the Malcatti gang who were involved both directly and indirectly in multiple anachronisms since the launch of the Time Bureau.”

“Great, so they have plenty of reason to be pissed at both of us,” Mick kills his beer before pulling another from his pocket.

Nate quirks his head to the side in thought, “Gideon, are there any warehouses in Central City that the gang owns?” Ava shoots him a look and he shrugged, “What? There’s always a warehouse involved.”

Gideon chimed back in, “The gang seems to be affiliated with three different warehouses in Central City.”

Ray got that same look as Nate, “Any of those three near some docks?”

Ava looked to the heavens and Ray continued, “Hey if there’s a warehouse then there’s definitely docks too.”

“In fact there is exactly one of the warehouses near the docks, and I am sending the coordinates of it to your time courier now Director Sharpe.”

Only Sara has the authorization to unlock the time drive so the Waverider would have to stay put. Ava took a deep breath before looking at each of the Legends, “Thanks Gideon, ok let’s suit up and go get our girl back.”

Mick pulled his flame gun from its side holster killing his second beer as he did so. Zari’s hand went to her neck and the wind totem that hung there. Ray took the miniature Atom suit from his pocket and was in it in seconds and Nate simply stepped forward with the rest of the team. Ava nodded to each of them and opened a portal behind her using the coordinates from Gideon.

\----

The door slams shut and Sara can’t hear it. She passed out the third time he put the hot iron to her skin. So the douche canoe leaves her unconscious, being held up by the chains. When she comes around, Sara makes no move to try and stand up again. She’ll try that in a bit. It takes a lot less energy to simply hang there and that’s what she chooses to focus on right now.

She tries to ignore the amount of blood, caked on her face, on her torso. Tries to ignore the drip of blood coming from the shackles around her wrists, she still can’t feel that anyway. It’s much harder to ignore the blood running over her feet from the ankle shackles, much harder to ignore the pain from the cuts across her back. The worst are the burns though, it’s getting harder and harder to ignore those.

Sara knows how strong she is, knows most people would have given in long before now. But even her body has its limits and the fact that she’d passed out in the last two sessions is evidence that she’s quickly reaching hers. Her captors keep asking the same questions every time and Sara knows she would die for her team, die for Ava. But she’d really rather it not come to that…so where the hell were they?

After a bit her vision begins to dim at the edges and she completely gives up the battle of trying to stand in favor of just hanging by her arms. Her head lolls forward when it gets too heavy and Sara loses the battle to stay conscious, almost welcoming the blackness as it overcomes her body.

\----

As much as Ava would love to storm the castle and take no prisoners she knows they need to be smart about this. She sends Ray on a recon mission to get a head count of how many people she and Legends are going to need to take down. From there she sends the Ray, Zari, and Mick around to the back entrance while she and Nate go through the side door.

They are ruthless stopping just short of killing anyone, but with Sara on the line none of the gang members really stood a chance. Ava can hear the guys and Zari taking more of the fight than she and Nate are, just like she planned.

The two of them slowly head toward the center of the warehouse, towards the one room that Ray said was clearly locked. When they get to it Nate doesn’t hesitate to steel up before breaking the lock like its made of paper. Ava shoves the door open and takes in a sight that chills her.

Sara is hanging limply by her arms, which are chained to the ceiling at an angle. Ava can’t see the front of her body but her back is covered in burns and cuts, even from the entrance she can see the lines of dried blood running from her wrists down her arms. Ava rushes forward, ducking under the chains to get to Sara’s face. The front of her girlfriend looks even more beat up than the back, the blonde hair that is covering Sara’s face is tinged pink and is sticking to the cuts clearly made from a ring that crisscross her cheeks.

Ava cradles Sara’s face between her hands, “Sara, baby can you hear me?” The lack of response sends a second chill through her, “Nate get her down. Get her down now.”

“On it.” Nate steels back up and as gently as he can breaks the chains holding Sara up, Ava catching her, lowering her to the ground as he does so. Once her arms are free Nate also breaks the chains around her ankles. Ava feeling rage at the blood surrounding the ankle and wrist shackles. She wants to kill every single person who had played a hand in this.

As Ava simmers with Sara in her arms the other Legends run through the door, the path behind them exceedingly silent. Ava knows she couldn’t pick Sara up on her own, the smaller woman was surprisingly dense for her size. So, when Mick holsters his gun and steps forward before kneeling in front of Ava and picking Sara up with more care than she’d ever seen him use and cradling her to his chest Ava doesn’t fight it. She simply opens a portal directly to the medbay of the Waverider.

The fluorescent lights of the med bay cause Sara’s injuries to stand out in even more striking detail as Mick carefully lays Sara on one of the chairs and Ray quickly hooks her up to Gideon so she can get pain meds and sedatives directly into her system. Ava’s breath catches in the back of her throat. “Where do you guys keep the bandages? Or the antiseptic?”

Zari appears next to her with two different kits and together the two of them began cleaning some of Sara’s more severe cuts. They both know Gideon will take care of all of these but she also knows getting them cleaned now will expedite Gideon’s healing process. She hears Mick cracking his knuckles behind her and knows Ray and Nate were still there as well. Once she and Zari had done what they can Ava turns to the other Legends, “Why don’t you guys go get some sleep I promise either Gideon or I will let you know when she wakes up.”

None of them looked happy to leave but with little murmurs toward Sara they all at least left the medbay. Once they were gone Ava’s shoulders slump forward and she breathes a ragged breath in. Looking at the woman she loves laying battered on the bed Ava feels tears finally prick her eyes. The tears she’s refused to let fall for the past two days, until she knew Sara was safe.

Seeing Sara like this, so still so hurt, reminds her too much of the death totem. Reminds her of the last time they’d nearly lost her. Another ragged breath in. Sitting next to the bed Ava gently took Sara’s hand, cognizant of the bandages around her wrist. She settled in to let Gideon work her magic, with this many injuries it would was going to take a while.

Despite her best effort to stay awake Ava must have dozed off because when she opens her eyes her head was resting on the chair near Sara’s thigh, she can feel the hand she’s still holding tighten its grip slightly and that really gets her attention. Shifting so Sara’s hand is now between both of her own, “Sara, Sara baby can you hear me?”

Sara’s forehead crinkled, “Yes, love I can hear you.” Her voice was more of a grumble or a croak than anything else, but Ava feels one of those ragged breaths finally release as a couple tears leave her eyes.

Ava let go of Sara’s hand to cradle her face instead, gently stroking her cheeks and talking nonsense, mostly saying “I love you” over and over again. The second of the ragged breaths releases when, a couple minutes later, Sara open her beautiful blue eyes which laser in on Ava’s gaze. Ava felt a great weight lift from her chest. A weight that had slowly been getting heavier since the moment she’d realized Sara was gone.

One of Sara’s hands reached up and gripped Ava’s wrist, “Love, you are the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in the past couple days.”

Ava gives a watery chuckle, “Really? Only the past couple?” She leans down until their foreheads were touching. Her hands were still on Sara’s face gently stroking her cheeks, carefully avoiding the half healed cuts along the length of them. Sara laughs and stops sharply as her body clearly does not appreciate the motion.

“Gideon can you give you captain more sedatives and pain meds please?” Ava recaptures her hold of Sara’s hand as she sits back into the chair next to the bed. “Take it easy baby, Gideon isn’t quite done working her magic yet.” Gideon hasn’t give a verbal response, but Ava sees Sara’s body and face relax and knows the AI gave her another full dose of meds.

Sara nods and grips Ava’s hand tighter, “Knew you’d find me.” There were tears in her eyes that told Ava just how close she must have been to giving in to whatever those assholes had wanted. And it kills Ava that that almost happened, kills her that she didn’t get there before it got to that point.

“I’m so sorry it took as long as it did. I’m sorry we didn’t get there sooner.” She whispers, kissing the back of Sara’s knuckles and leaning forward on her elbows holding Sara’s hand against her cheek.

Sara’s eyes soften and begin to get hazy as the drugs really kick in. Ava watches as her eyelids droop, and can barely hear Sara’s reply before she passes back out again entirely, “It’s ok, all that matters is you got there.”

\----

Later that night, after the other Legends have come in to the med-bay to see with their own eyes that Sara was nearly healed, after Gideon had declared Sara healed and bodily healthy, Ava hadn’t been willing to let Sara walk the 150 ft to her room despite Gideon’s declaration and had opened a portal directly there from the med-bay. Ava and Sara were lying in bed, Ava was holding Sara snug against her, holding her as gently and firmly as possible. She didn’t care what Gideon said about Sara being completely healed and was determined to be careful, determined to keep her girlfriend as safe as possible.

Sara was completely passed out, that was the other reason Ava had simply opened a portal instead of trying to walk Sara to her room, she was still incredibly tired from the sedatives Gideon had given her.

Ava took a deep breath and releasing it slowly into Sara’s hair, _she’s here she’s safe and she’s never leaving my sight again._ That was the mantra she’d been repeating in her head since Sara had woken up for those few minutes earlier. Honestly, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever stop repeating it. As they lay there Ava just listened to her girlfriend breathe, until Sara began to stir a bit though it didn’t seem like it was from a nightmare and for that Ava was incredibly grateful.

When they’d first gotten together Ava had discovered Sara frequently woke in a cold sweat because of nightmares from literally any of the trauma she’d gone through. So, while she knew Sara may wake up in the nights to come from this she was just glad it wasn’t tonight.

Sara woke up enough to turn around and cuddle into her chest, head tucked perfectly under Ava’s chin. “You’re ok baby I’ve got you.” Ava began swirling circles into Sara’s back and squeezed her just a little tighter.

They stayed that way for a couple minutes before Sara pulled away just enough to be able to look at Ava, a puzzled look on her face, “Not that I’m not incredibly happy you did it, but how did you manage to find me? I could have sworn I’d done a lot to make sure tracking would be hard as hell to do.”

She smirked slightly before answering, “Trust me, we noticed. It took a couple days but we found one time that you’d forgotten to switch off the tracking beacon on the jump ship before leaving and we narrowed it down from there based on who had grudges against the Legends or the Bureau or you.”

Sara let out a pent up breath into Ava’s chest, “It was Legends and the Bureau, they wanted access codes to the Bureau and the Waverider. Were pissed when we fixed an anachronism because it made their lives hard apparently.”

After that they were quiet again for a bit until Ava worked up the courage to ask a question that had been eating at her. “Why do you go to Central City every few weeks? Why 2016?”

Sara didn’t answer right away, choosing to fiddle with the hem of Ava’s shirt for a bit instead. “I..I go to see my mom, she’s the only part of my family still alive and I don’t want to waste that.” There was a crinkle in between Sara’s eyebrows as she quietly spoke and a clear sign Sara was trying not to cry. “I didn’t tell anyone or want anyone to track me because I was afraid something like what happened would happen, but to her not me. And I just want to keep her safe.”

Ava was a little stunned, of course she knew Sara’s mother lived in Central City, but Sara never talked about her. She rarely talked about any of her family and Ava never pushed. She’d made it clear that she was there for whatever and whenever Sara wanted to talk about where her family was concerned, especially after Quentin had died, but never wanted to push. “Oh baby, how long have you been seeing her?”

“About twice a month since my dad died.”

“But to her he hasn’t died yet…neither has Laurel right?”

“No, I’m…I’m trying to get to know her now so that when all of that happens.” Sara paused to almost gather herself, “So when all of that happens I’m not almost a stranger and…and can be there for her the way a daughter should be.” The words were spoken at almost a whisper, spoken quiet enough that the words barely traveled to Ava’s ears.

Ava hugged Sara tightly against her changing from tracing patterns in Sara’s back to gently scratching up and down her spine. “Has it helped? Seeing your mom more often?”

Speaking into her chest Sara murmured her answer, “I think so, I didn’t realize how much I’d missed her…or honestly considered how much she missed me.”

“Baby of course she missed you, you’re her daughter.” She kissed the top of Sara’s head softly.

“Well, technically I am dead in the time I’m visiting her right now and haven’t stepped foot on the Waverider yet so that took a little explaining to do when I first showed up. It also took a lot of convincing for her to not immediately call Laurel and Dad about it.”

She could feel the small grin on Sara’s face even if she couldn’t see it and couldn’t help but grin a little too at the thought of that conversation, “Well from your family’s files it definitely sounds like you get your fire from her.”

“Love, that is what I would call and understatement.” Sara yawned massively and Ava could feel her relaxing again, “Sooner rather than later I would really like you to meet her. But only if you want to.” The last bit was said quickly as though Sara realized as she was speaking that might not be something Ava wanted.

Pressing another soft kiss into Sara’s hair Ava barely had to think for half a moment before answering, “Whenever, you’re ready darling I would love that.”

She could feel Sara’s eyelashes fluttering against her neck and her voice was heavy with sleep, “Yay, all my family together.”

Shortly after Sara’s breathing grew deeper and Ava knew she was asleep again. She felt herself relaxing and finally succumbing to the exhaustion that had been building since Sara had disappeared. Ava repeated her mantra a couple more times before drifting off, but just before she did Ava felt her heart swell, that was the first time Sara had called her family.

**Author's Note:**

> I just feel like Sara and her mom deserve a chance ok! And I feel like it's never addressed in the actual show  
> The title comes from Mumford and Son's Ghosts That We Knew  
> If you leave a kudos I'll feel all warm and fuzzy inside and a comment will make me smile for the whole day :)  
> Feel free to come bother me on Tumblr! same name as always prettypeary


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